Category Archives: Life - Page 13

Mobile Photography

Posted by on September 25, 2012 1 comment

The Apps

I have been traveling around quite a bit lately.  The thing that always goes with me is my photography bag.  (It’s contents are listed in the sidebar)  What doesn’t always go with me is my laptop.  You see, I have a behemoth of a laptop.  It’s an older ASUS gaming laptop that, while great for gaming, and processing photos, and everything else, is just HUGE!  I love it to death, but it’s just not a feasible option for simple travel.  Sure, if I am going to be someplace for an extended time, or have a lot of luggage I can take, it would make more sense.  So in most cases, I just use my iPad.

When I bought the iPad I have now, I knew I would be using it for photog stuff, so the 64gb size made sense.  I shoot primarily in RAW and that takes up a lot of space.  Of course, storage isn’t the only concern though.  I needed a few good quality applications to round out it’s usage.  I thought that I would post about what I am using and the process in which I use them.

The apps that I tend to use the most (for photography) are:

So, there’s all the tools, but how do you incorporate them into a shoot?  Easy!  Here is a play by play on how I would go about using all of these tools out in the field to Shoot, display, organize, process, and publish.

Release Forms

I have an upcoming project I am working on for a photo essay on Portraits. (subject to be explained at a later date)  I will be on location for the duration of the project and won’t have access to my PC until much later.  So I would go about the shoot, like usual.  Meet with the subject and discuss the plans for the project and their involvement.  If they agree to the project they would then fill out the release form in Easy Release and sign.  Then I would have them fill out the form I created in Numbers that asks them for information specific to the project. (Simple questionnaire)  It’s important to have questions in the survey that would identify them in the pictures.

Using my Nikon camera and lighting gear (supplemented by the SoftBox app) we would take the photos.  The Eye-Fi card would wirelessly transfer the JPG preview to the iPad, which would be standing nearby, to display the picture I just took (within a second or two).  This allows a larger screen to see framing, lighting, exposure.  I like the LCD on my camera, but sometimes it’s just not big enough to judge if I got the shot I wanted, or was just off. The downside to this is the time it takes to transfer.  If you are shooting at an event where speed is a factor, this is not a good solution.  Of course, if you at an event like that, you probably aren’t checking your LCD every few shots either.

Eye-Fi used as quick Preview

Softbox can show different colors or textures

Once the shots are done I import the RAW into the iPad using the camera connector. (it’s an important step to delete the Eye-Fi imported JPG’s to avoid duplicates).  Then I can use Photosmith to organize the shots into groups, flag the ones I want to keep/discard/etc. Now, I can stop here and wait for my PC to process photos, since when I get to it I can sync Photosmith to Lightroom and go from there, but, if I am going to be out for a while and want to get some work done quickly, I can proceed with processing.

Organizing and tagging like a PRO!

Using Photosmith I can identify the shots that I want to focus on.  If I shot in bracketed mode for HDR use, I would find the two shots I want to combine and open them in Pro HDR.  Adjust the levels, and save then move on to Snapseed.  For a typical shoot, I would just open in Snapseed. This allows me to adjust all my levels, colors, and balance.  I can do some selective adjustment as well.  If I need to use more precise editing, or want a more Lightroom type feel, I can use Filterstorm instead of or in conjunction with Snapseed.

HDR Editing on the fly

Quick Professional edits

Precise edits

Once editing is finished I can use the iPad to post to various social networks, email, and even my own website.  Using FlickStackr I can upload to Flickr directly, add all the info I need, tag it with keywords, location, and people.

Uploading and tagging on Flickr

So there you have it.  The whole process described above can be done, on the scene, in a matter of minutes.  (depending on shoot time)

Now, that’s not to say that this process doesn’t have it’s faults. You certainly aren’t going to get as accurate processing as you would with Lightroom on a PC.  As with all electronics, battery life is an issue too.  The Eye-Fi card adds a draw to the camera battery, and having the iPad up and receiving drains it as well.  Barring that, I love being able to set up, shoot, process, and publish all while on the road.

Costuming in Advance!

Posted by on September 24, 2012 No comments

DragonCon is coming!

Well, sort of.

DragonCon, one of the big conventions we like to attend, usually takes place over labor day weekend in September.  Since it’s still September now, you may be wondering while I mention that it’s “Coming”.  That is because THIS time, we are planning in advance!  Both Sarah and I are working on costumes for NEXT DragonCon, and we are getting the jump on them so we don’t end up scrambling at the end of the year trying to get them done.

The big costume I have planned for D*C is Harry Dresden.  He is a character from the books “The Dresden Files” which is a Mystery series set in a supernatural world.  I had enough friends get on me for not reading the books that I finally broke down and dove into them.  I love the series and realized that I had most of what I needed already and just needed to assemble.  The results are as follows:

The Book Cover shot, thus the hat.

Important elements: Black leather duster, shield bracelet, power rings on each finger, leather glove on left (burned) hand, Pentacle amulet, Runed Staff, Bob the Spirit skull.
Still needing work: Blasting Rod, more solid electronics for Bob the skull, and potentially a new Shield Bracelet.

Our goal is to have a group of Dresden costumers at the 2013 DragonCon, Sarah is going to be Elaine, and we have a Thomas and Lara as well.

World Traveler

Posted by on August 28, 2012 No comments

Huge sorry for the lack of content for the last few weeks. Things have been a tad bit hectic as of late. You see, I have been traveling around for work and working very long days, so I haven’t had a lot of time to write. After the London trip I went back out to North Carolina for a week, and then off to Arizona for a month or so. The downside was a serious lack of time, but the plus side is I got to see some cool stuff and even take some great pictures.

I was down in Sierra Vista AZ and the landscape looks amazing. Armed with my trusty camera travel kit (aka, “My Bag” stuff to the right —> ) I set out to capture some great sunsets. Below are the results:

Sunset at Sierra Vista
Looking towards the mountains in Sierra vista lends to a great sunset shot.

Tombstone Cemetary
In Tombstone AZ, just about a 30 min drive from Sierra Vista, there are two cemeteries. The one most people know is Boot Hill, which is where the victims of the OK Corral are buried, and then the main cemetery, where everyone else goes. The real one is MUCH better looking (Boot hill looks like someones Halloween decorations).Cross at Sunset

The graves there date back to the foundation of the town.

For comparison, here are the Boot Hill graves:

Seems Safe
While venturing out (by myself) I ran across this sign and thought it might not be a good idea to be out, at night, so late, alone.

Shot for a shot
Back in Tombstone, at Big Nose Kates Saloon, I had a great shot of this whiskey. When the Barkeep asked if I wanted a picture of the bottle, he whipped out all the props for it!

After one of the trips to Arizona, I took a side trip to Parris Island South Carolina to watch my Son (who, you may remember, went off to the Marines) graduate Basic Training (aka, boot camp (aka, 3 months of hell)). Proud Father is Proud.

And lastly, not that I am back, I am trying to get back to normal. This means attending events like the local DC Metro MINI’s annual picnic! Where we got together and took this great shot:

Click to Super Embiggen

So, yeah. It’s been a bit busy. I will try and keep things updated more now that I am home (for now)

London Shots, Part Deux

Posted by on July 26, 2012 No comments

Slowly working my way through the shots I had planned to process.  Here is the next batch!

On Guard
While walking past Buckingham Palace, we didn’t plan on going in, but I would be remiss if I didn’t grab a shot of one of the guards.

From the Eye
From the London Eye, everything seems so small!  I loved the skewed view of this shot, and the curve of the earth.

Nevermore
“As every school child knows, there have been ravens at the Tower of London since time immemorial, and if they ever leave, the monarchy and the tower itself will fall.”

View from Greenwich
While visiting the Prime Meridian, we got a great view of the city. You can see them building up te Horse Arena to be used for the Olympics.

Overgrown
Highgate Cemetery is separated into and East and West side.  We opted for the East side and I am glad we did.  It’s covered with overgrown graves and very ominous.

Collecting Autographs

Posted by on July 23, 2012 1 comment

Jewel Got Photobombed!

One of my favorite hobbies takes place while at conventions, but doesn’t involve costumes, friends, or drinking.  (because, what else is there at conventions?)  I love seeing the guest list for conventions because it means I may have the chance to meet someone who is responsible for creating some of my favorite shows/books/movies.  To much extent, this is one of the main reasons for attending for me, and one of the first things I do at a convention!  There is just something about going up to a guest, shaking their hand (or giving the Iron Guard), and thanking them for what they do.  On that rare occasion, you even have enough time to sit and talk with them about their craft, or hobbies, or even just what they think about the conventions.

 

To remember the visit I will usually grab one of the 8×10’s they have and have them sign it.  Not to monetize it, but to have that memory.  It’s always personalized (if they can, some of them have their reasons), and I consider it as my contribution to them for the time they spent with me.  Sometimes the memory and time is great, and sometimes it’s not, but it is always a memory I will have.

Me dressed at Matty Roth from DMZ with Felicia.

I recently decided to grab shots of all of my current autographs.  Most of them are down in the “Man-Cave” but some are still yet to be framed and mounted.  Some interesting ones are the set of four autographs from Felicia Day, and the four from Jewel Staite.  We learned that four is the magic number, when it comes to that line between fandom and stalking.  I love both Jewel and Felicia for what they do and who they are, but I don’t want to be that guy who is always in their line every convention.  That’s just creepy.  So we go for four autographs and call it at that.  It’s enough that, by the end of it, they tend to recognize you enough to smile and wave, but not overly enough to be weird-ed out by your presence.

Below are just a few of my favorites, you can find the rest in a gallery here on my site.

Meeting Wil was indeed…Awesome

EJO was inspiring to meet in person

Jewel played the 501st’s game of “Droid Hunt” and had a blast.

Two of my favorite actors from Warehouse 13!!

London Shots

Posted by on July 17, 2012 No comments

As promised, here are a few of the good shots as I go through and process them.

London Panorama

Click to Embiggen

This panorama was shot from up on Parliament Hill in Hampstead Heath.  We stopped off at the Southampton Arms pub and had a few GREAT pints of cider.  Somehow we thought it would be a good idea to stagger through the park and hike all the way up to the top of the hill.  I am really glad we did since I was able to take this shot.  I used Photoshop CS5 to stitch the panorama together.

The Clock Tower

Click to Embiggen

Here is your standard picture of the Clock Tower.  Apparently, Big Ben is the name of the bell inside the tower.  We stopped along the bridge and I snapped this one pretty quick.  I was happy with how it came out.

London Eye Long Exposure

Click to Embiggen

London Eye with the Shard

Click to Embiggen

On the Thursday we were there, the building known as The Shard was having its opening ceremonies.  Part of that was shooting off lasers across the city!  I didn’t have much time to get to a closer location and thought that, through the London Eye would be a good shot.  I set up for about an hour and got both of these shots.  One is the lasers going off and the other is a Long Exposure of the Eye as it spun.  The laser show started at 10:15pm and the Eye stops moving at 10:00pm

London Underground

Click to Embiggen

Lastly (for now) is the London Underground.  On the last day I realized I didn’t have any good shots of the Tube.  I loved the blur on the train for this one, but had to do some cleaning up of some other parts of the shot.  Lets just say someone gave a crack at photobombing.

I will try and have some more shots up soon.

We’re Back!

Posted by on July 16, 2012 No comments

This was the start of our London Journey

Hey all!

We are now back from London!  We had a total blast the whole time out there and I took a metric F-Ton of pictures! (They use the metric system over there.)  Most of them are the touristy style pics, you know, because that’s what we were.  I did manage to set up and take some good solid pictures that will require some post processing and tweaking.  Those will be trickling out over the coming days.  Sarah actually as a very good day by day accounting of our trip over on her website.

 

Sarah got a few snaps of me taking snaps

I did want to touch on a few things that really made the trip though. (from a Gadget/Tech/Game perspective, that is.)  For my photography stuff I brought the whole backpack of gear, but rarely used all of it.  For general city travels I used my messenger bag and typically just the camera and my 18-270mm lens.  It was great for all around shooting.  On a few days I brought my 35mm with me, but rarely needed to swap it out.  I found that carrying around my full 15-20lb bag of gear would wear me out fast.  Also, I am not ashamed to say that a lot of shots were done in AUTO.  I was there as a tourist, I liked some of what I saw so I wanted a picture.  These were for memories, not art.  I know there are some photogs out there that claim they would never use the AUTO setting on their camera……they are full of crap.  It’s there for a reason.  To get the memory you want at a good quality.

Setting up for a shot of the London Eye

That said, I also set up a number of shots specifically to be processed and done in an artistic way.  These were set in M and bracketed.  The downside being that 1: I have a large number of photos to go through, and 2: Sometimes I would forget I was bracketed and ended up with some shots all over the place in exposure. (what, I was tired!)  All of my Touristy shots are in my gallery on the site here.  My Artistic shots will be trickling out as I work on them and probably uploaded to Flickr.  Keep an eye out!

 

Actually, we had good Signal everywhere

We had a very fun experience with Cell phones while in the UK as well.  My friend loaned me an old iPhone 3G for the trip and my wife as using her unlocked Motorola Razr Maxx.  First thing at the airport I tried one of the kiosks to grab a sim that we could at least use to call our driver. It was an O2 card that was 10£. Sadly, I didn’t use it at all, it had no data and we found our driver before needing it.  Next, while out we hit up a local shop that dealt in various phone stuff. I picked up a 3 sim that had the low end of texts and min, but unlimited data for 15£. Since we were only using data while here it would be perfect. It worked perfect in the old iPhone but in the wife’s Motorola it wouldn’t get any data. The guy said to go to the 3 store in westfields and they would fix it.

Had I realized (or not been tired from the plane) there was a mall right next to me, I would have just gone there.  The 3 store was shit for help. Their on staff folks were clueless and their phone support couldn’t figure out the Android APN settings.  We decided to hit the O2 store and got a sim that had 500mb data topped up to 1.5gb. The Guru was enamored with the Motorola and set up the APN very quickly. Everything worked great! Again, had I been more aware of my mental state, I would have just had them top up the card I bought at Heathrow.

As a side note, while out and about we noticed that O2 had better service with better coverage, but 3 had that unlimited data factor for cheap.  The final score board was 1 O2 Sim from the airport never used. 10£ 1 3 Sim from random store, never used 15£ 1 3 Sim from random store, used in iPhone 15£ 1 O2 sim from O2 store, used in Motorola, 20£

Yeah, that’s a game.

From the gaming side of things, we had a great meetup with some of the RetroNickRadio fans out in the UK!  You can find the details of that over at the RetroNick site.  We were also clued in to a little hole in the all Arcade located right near the London Eye.  I got very few pictures and didn’t have enough time to really explore, but it was a great find.

 

 

I know this post is starting to drag on so I will cut out here.  Expect some more excerpts from the trip in the coming weeks!

On Holiday

Posted by on June 27, 2012 No comments

Cheers mates!

Just a quick post to say that we are heading off to jolly ol’ England for a bit of a holiday!  Many gadgets will be used and pictures will be taken.  An interesting note, we are not planning on taking any laptops!  This will be a little bit of an experiment.  Sarah and I are only taking the iPads and our phones.  I’ll stock up on Memory cards and clear off the iPad to use for storage for pictures, but yeah, no laptop.

We rented a flat in London and it is supposed to have Internet access.  to spread this into WiFi I picked up a [amazon_link id=”B004T8FC66″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]ZuniConnect Travel Router[/amazon_link].  So far this thing is awesome.  It will bridge the connection from a wired LAN to WiFi, or the reverse, Or echo an existing WiFi!  This will work out great to share the connection with the iPads and phones.  So far I have used it to extend my WiFi connection to a wired only machine and it worked great.  More reports to come.

We have a huge list of things to see and fun to be had, including a day trip out to Stonehenge!  Keep an eye on Twitter for some potential updates along the way!

HTPC of Doom!

Posted by on June 15, 2012 1 comment

Ok, it wasn’t really of doom, but I liked the title.  This last week I have spent a lot of time building my new media PC to be hooked up to my TV.  I canceled cable, and my Tivo service and am now relying on online services and rentals.  I just got tired of missing things when they aired, the DVR not catching them for some reason and then not being able to see things.

So I built an HTPC (Home Theater PC) to pull in my DVD’s, and play videos straight off the web.  I was using my Xbox for this, but, while the Xbox has been coming out with more and more apps to cover everything, it’s still not perfect.  So I balanced it out with the HTPC.

Sorry for the low-rez, I was excited

Thankfully, I am friends with an HTPC expert, my friend Louis.  The one I built is based on the one he owns.  He helped spec out the parts and guided me through the setup.  See, I haven’t exactly built a desktop PC in around 8 years.  Apparently, a lot has changed since then!  All of the parts arrived on Monday afternoon.  This was bad.  See, I a the type that wants to open and play as soon as I get stuff.  So that evening I dove in to start building.

Huge Mistake.

I was up till 1am before I finally got everything installed and running.  WIndows was fully patched and ready to go.  Then, Tuesday, Louis had me check the mode the Hard drives was running in.  Turns out they were defaulted to IDE and needed to be in ACHI.  Yeah, when I made the switch (even after following instructions to ensure it wouldn’t happen) the OS was wiped out.  I had to do the software portion all over again.

Long story made short, I spent the last few evenings tweaking and configuring.  I am now running the following:

  • [amazon_link id=”B004EBUXHQ” target=”_blank” ]Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost)[/amazon_link]
  • [amazon_link id=”B002X578GE” target=”_blank” ]G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333[/amazon_link]
  • [amazon_link id=”B004Q81CKY” target=”_blank” ]OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5″ 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive[/amazon_link] (SSD) (Boot Drive)
  • 2 x [amazon_link id=”B0042SGDVG” target=”_blank” ]SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive[/amazon_link] (for 4TB Total)
  • [amazon_link id=”B0048D7AD0″ target=”_blank” ]SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card[/amazon_link]
  • [amazon_link id=”B005FE52X6″ target=”_blank” ]ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard[/amazon_link]
  • [amazon_link id=”B005HGPPG6″ target=”_blank” ]LIAN LI Black Aluminum PC-C60B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case[/amazon_link]

Needless to say, I may have gone a bit overboard on the hardware for something as simple as a Media Box.  However, playing Civ-V on the 47” tv is pretty damn cool.

Downside, I am exhausted.  Sleep soon!

Sometimes weird/cool things just happen!

Posted by on June 4, 2012 No comments

This weekend was a pretty productive weekend.  We had a great “Guy’s Night” where we introduced @NeuralClone to [amazon_link id=”B0051E9INK” target=”_blank” ]Highlander[/amazon_link], since he had never seen it. (I know, right?) After which we watched Iron Sky.  You know, the Nazis on the moon movie.  Seriously, go watch that.  It’s one of the funniest movies I have seen.

Saturday the weather was amazing so I spent the time outside replacing the thermostat on my truck.  This is a big accomplishment for me since I am still convinced that the engine in most cars runs on magical wishes and unicorn dreams.  Now if I could just get a starter that works when I shout “ENGINUS COMBUSTUS!”  So you can understand that doing any sort of work on a car is a big deal for me.  Having finished up this feat of manliness, I decided to take Sarah out for dinner for a nice evening.

This is really where the weird/cool stuff happens.

We drove down to Old Town Manassas to go to a small restaurant called City Square Cafe.  It’s a nice little place with outdoor seating.  Dinner was good, the company was great. (But then, that’s why I keep her around right?)  After dinner we thought we would try our hand at a few GeoCaches that were close by.  It made for a good excuse to walk around and enjoy the evening.

No luck on those, by the way.  It was dark and we just couldn’t find anything.

When we returned to the car we found this note on the windshield.
Now, you probably know this, but I wear my geek on my sleeve.  The back of my MINI has the plate “WIZ-POD”, since my truck has “W1ZZER”, and I have lots of stickers of geeky things.  This would have to be one of the first time I have ever been hit on due to my car being geeky.
Sarah and I had a good chuckle about the event and, while I thought it would be weird if I emailed her, Sarah took the initiative and sent off a note to say “Hi!”  Clearly it takes a lot of Chutzpah to drop a note like that to meet someone so, you never know, she may be a cool person to know!

Sadly, as of today, no reply has been seen.

Life is short!  Make new friends! Say hi to people!  You never know who you may meet!

P.S. the car behind me was a PT Cruiser